By Alimat Aliyeva

A group of European, British, and American astronomers has discovered 34 binary white dwarf systems in the immediate vicinity of the Milky Way using the GAIA orbital telescope and the WHT ground-based telescope. This discovery is part of the DBL project, which aims to identify potential candidates for type 1a supernova sources, Azernews reports.

One of the notable discoveries is the WDJ181058.67+311940.94 system, located in the constellation Hercules, at a distance of 159 light-years from Earth. The white dwarfs in this system are just 2.5 million kilometers apart, which is about 60 times closer than the distance between Earth and the Sun. Their combined mass exceeds the solar mass by 1.55 times, making it the first nearby candidate for a potential type 1a supernova. The occurrence of a type 1a supernova explosion from this system is expected in about 23 billion years, according to a press release from the University of Warwick.

"The discovery of such a star system in our local region of the Galaxy provides strong evidence that pairs of white dwarfs are relatively common," said Ingrid Pelisoli, associate professor at the University of Warwick. "Each discovery brings us closer to solving the mystery of how type 1a supernovae form."

Type 1a supernovae occur due to the merger of pairs of compact objects, such as white dwarfs or neutron stars, whereas type 2 supernovae happen when stars that have exhausted their hydrogen reserves undergo gravitational collapse. Type 1a supernovae are crucial to astronomers, as they are used as "standard candles" to measure distances in space and track the rate at which the universe is expanding.

For a type 1a supernova to occur, a pair of stars must be at a specific minimum distance from each other, and their total mass must exceed the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.44 solar masses. As the white dwarfs in such a system lose energy through gravitational radiation, they spiral inward and eventually merge, leading to a supernova explosion. Until this discovery, astronomers had not identified such systems in the closer regions of the Milky Way.

This discovery could significantly enhance our understanding of the physics behind type 1a supernovae and the processes leading to their occurrence. These stellar events play a crucial role in our knowledge of the universe, not only because they help us measure cosmic distances but also because they provide insights into the life cycles of stars and the evolution of galaxies.

Furthermore, the study of binary white dwarf systems could also help refine current models of gravitational waves, as the merging of white dwarfs in such systems could eventually lead to detectable gravitational wave signals. These waves, first directly observed in 2015, open new frontiers in astrophysics, offering a new way to observe and understand the universe beyond traditional light-based astronomy.

As more systems like WDJ181058.67+311940.94 are discovered, they may provide more precise data to improve our understanding of dark energy, the expanding universe, and the ultimate fate of stellar remnants.